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UGS 302- Young Children, Schools, and Democracy - Payne

Find Sources

Find Articles on a Topic

For this assignment, you might need a few types of sources:

Source Type Start Here

Scholarly Articles

Start with the library search bar - advanced search. Try the "peer reviewed" limit. You can also use the recommended library databases. 

Books

Start with the library search bar - advanced search. More information on the find books tab on the left. Consider publisher and author as you decide if a book is scholarly. You might only read and use the chapters most relevant to your research. 
News Specific publication websites or Google News; Nexis Uni to access many of our news subscriptions. More on the Finding News Guide.
Legislation & Court Cases

US Legislation - https://www.congress.gov/; Texas Legislation - Texas Legislature Online. If you really need to dig into laws, the Government Documents guide might be helpful.

Court Cases - Nexis Uni is a good place to start. For Supreme Court cases, Oyez (from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (LII), Justia, and Chicago-Kent College of Law) is a good resource,

Searching databases is different than searching Google. Distil what you're looking for into a few key terms or phrases, rather than whole sentences. 

  1. Is the academic achievement of immigrant students impacted by national policy debates on immigration?)
  2. For each main concept, brainstorm a few synonyms and related terms (broader or narrower) that get at that concept:
    • Key Concepts 

      immigrant students academic achievement policy debates
      Related Terms

      undocumented students (more specific)

      immigrants

       

       

      learning

      academic performance

      achievement (more general)

      success

      academic success

      public debate

      policy ideas

      policy proposals

      attitudes (more general/related)

      negative attitudes

      positive attitudes 

  3. Combine key terms using AND and OR:​​
    • AND narrows your search by looking for articles with all of the words (your two or three key concepts should be connected with AND, because you need all of them represented in useful articles). 
    • OR broadens your search by looking for articles with any of the words (synonyms and related terms should be separated by OR - they get at the same key concepts, so any of them are useful).
  4. Try different combinations of your keywords to get better results as you search.

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What are databases?

This video, from RMIT University, explains what a database is...

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If you don’t see a .pdf of the article you want, click FIND IT AT UT to find it in another database or in print in the Libraries.

If it is only in print in the Libraries or we don’t own the article, click GET A SCAN to have the article emailed to you. This option will take a few days.

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